ALife

The Atlantic Monthly (April 2002) has a wonderful little essay by Jonathan Rauch on artificial life. Simple simulations of flocks of independent agents can generate complex behavior -- flocking, for example, or the schooling of fishes, seems to require lots of central planning but can actually emerge from simple rules without any central leader. Rauch reports on recent work on the emergence of communities, the stability of corporations, and the disappearance of the Anasazi.

(Thanks to Aaron Swartz and Bill Humphries for the link.)

This is the sort of essay that Scientific American used to do so well -- an essay that makes you want to fire up your computer and try to replicate the experiments yourself.